It’s not the kind of thing you like to hear, especially this time of year.

A friend of mine told me last week that his long-held, full-time job is being reduced to part time and his salary cut in half.

My friend’s misfortune runs counter to the narrative that Michigan is “the comeback state” with an economy purring as smoothly as the engine of a new Lansing-built Cadillac.

Yes, job growth is on the rise again as the state has added more than 270,000 payroll jobs since the end of the national Great Recession in July of 2009.

Plus, some people lose their jobs and have their hours cut in the best of times. It’s the nature of a dynamic economy where jobs are simultaneously created and destroyed.

But a couple of recent reports show that Michigan’s economy is running a little rough and the “check engine” light is flashing on the dashboard.

A monthly state labor market study based on October jobs numbers shows that Michigan ranks in the bottom tier of states in important areas such as employment, the labor force participation rate, per capita income and economic output per capita.

Forget about Michigan’s unemployment rate, which at 9 percent in October was the third-highest state jobless rate in the country.

The real jobless figure in the third quarter of this year ending Sept. 30 was 15.8 percent, according to the state’s Bureau of Labor Market Information and Strategic Initiatives.

That figure comes from the “U-6” measure, which includes those who have given up looking for work and those who are working part time but are seeking full-time work.

Just 60.3 percent of Michigan working-age adults were in the labor force in October, the lowest rate among the Great Lakes states and 39th lowest in the country.

But the most worrisome concern is for those who will eventually become the heart of Michigan’s work force—its children.

Nearly 560,000 Michigan children—about one in four—were living in poverty in 2011, according to the annual Kids Count report from the Michigan League for Public Policy.

And nearly 40 percent of them qualified for federal food assistance last year because their families were living on incomes under 130 percent of the federal poverty rate of about $31,000 a year for a two-parent, two-child family.

“It’s especially troubling that young children are growing up in poverty because research shows a deeper lifelong impact of deprivation during early childhood, said Jane Zehnder-Merrell, Michigan Kids Count director.

In other words, children growing up in poverty are more likely to become poor adults, inadequately prepared to participate in an economy that requires a mix of technical and social skills.

Michigan needs to make sure as many people as possible possess those skills if it wants to have a truly healthy economy.